To think that contestants should be banned from telling us their sob stories on game shows?

[mumofoneAloneandwell]

Now i am secretly rooting for the other person to beat you 😬

Bring back contestants who want the money for a boob job!

Race Across the World is terrible for this and they even try to carry it across to the Celebrity version. It's funny to see Roman and Harleymoon Kemp scrambling around for a sob story - they've come up with something about being treated like nepo babies?
I guess I don't mind it too much on that show when it's a compelling sob story because you feel like you're getting to know the contestants on that show and the format means they get to have a story arc. But I really don't like it when they force it

Tell us more about yourself .......... just no. I do not give a shit. I used to watch Ambulance and similar because I was interested in the medical/ factual side now it is storytelling. Unless it is relevant stop it. It is dumbing down, c

I have to watch everything on catch-up so I can fast forward any back stories, I just don't give a fuck 🤷‍♀️ it's just time wasting and filler

I recall one show, cannot recall the name but a woman who was related to a mistress of Edward VII and clearly had an education and confidence won, or did very well. Won a lot of money - " it's not fair, she's rich and does not deserve to win. It should only be for poor people or someone who deserves to win".
No, you win if you know the general.knieoedge questions. If you don't know, you lose.

I was watching I'm A Celebrity last night and they showed another clip of Jack Osbourne crying and getting very emotional when talking to another campmate about his dad. My first thoughts are that he's probably still too emotionally fragile to be on this show just yet, so soon after Ozzy's death. Maybe it's cathartic for him to be letting it out, who knows. However, we only get to see a fraction of what goes on in camp and I don't think the producers should be showing us stuff like this as it could potentially earn them a sympathy vote, which isn't fair to the others.

I bumped into a producer of a car makeover show and told him I'd always fatasised about my car being done over. But I told my colleagues I didn't want to go down the sob story route

It's so annoying, repetitive and boring isn't it? Didn't it turn out that the mum who had lost her identity and sacrificed everything to raise her only son (who went to boarding school by the way), was a horse trainer and champion eventer, who had won a national championship the year before? Horses and eventing are her life, yet it was never mentioned. Cynical manipulation of the audience. I suppose because they won, the edit had to make them more relatable to the average viewer.

Damn you edited it! I preferred it when it was a cat makeover show 😂

Judith Keppel from Eggheads

Yes! DS and I hated that series because of her - she was so fake!

but in defence of the Welsh lad - he’d had cancer and he had diabetes and he clearly didn’t want to talk about it and it was barely mentioned. Whereas Caroline and her bloody ‘I’ve had no life and I have no confidence’ whilst she was making petal products with Indian women who have much less optionality in life than her was pretty sickening

Wait what?? She was acting she had lost all confidence outside of the family home etc
Didnt she say she didnt do much for herself? or thats how it came across anyway.

I am really cynical about those things now anyway. Theyre probably sitting between takes being told 'embellish! Embellish!'

The mum of the two brothees who was distant probably just had a stiff upper lip 🤣

This was the natural progression from Bullseye - where Jim would spend the first third of the show blethering tedious rubbish with the contestants.

Of course, this was long before the sob story had been invented(!), but somebody would mention their very dull job and Jim would ask the most boring questions ever about it.

"Aaaahhĥ, so you're a dry cleaner? And is your shop in Preston itself, or one of the surrounding suburbs? Tell me, what kind of chemical formula do you mostly use in the process? Oh, I see - and how many bottles would you usually get through in a week? Do you charge an extra supplement for suede or leather? And do you open late on Thursdays?"

When people could simply take no more job-based tedium, but there were still 7 minutes of air time to fill, the sob story was born!

I always feel so sorry for contestants when they say that, if they win, they want to splash out on the fancy car or world cruise that they've always dreamed of; then the next contestant says that they need the money to pay for a life-saving operation or to give to their local hospice, and thus they totally wee in the first person's chips on national TV.

And the people who say they want to give SOME of the tens-of-thousands prize money to a worthy cause that's so very dear to them. How much? Three quarters? Half? 10%? We all know that a tenner would just as much count as 'some', if that's your little ploy!

Yeah, or they always seem to work for the NHS, so get a 5 minute standing ovation from Michael and the celebrities. Think the one I watched the other day was going to give some of the money to make a wish, I couldn't; I'd be like, "I've got a mortgage to pay, credit card debts, my energy bills have went up 200% and my grocery shopping costs me double now Michael, I'm spending every penny on me if I win" which is probably why I'll never get on any gameshow and I have applied to a few in the past.

Totally agree. It's people (American game show contestants) that take a relatively ordinary life event and make out they've been through serious trauma that annoy me the most, like talking about their parents' divorcing when they were a kid and coming from a 'broken home'. Lots of people divorce - it doesn't equal a broken home.

Between the sob stories and the 'let me spend 10 minutes telling you all the tiny things that have gone through my brain while I'm deciding whether to pick A, B or C', quiz shows are becoming a hard watch these days.

It's the home makeover shows.
"My house burned to the ground/got flattened by a hurricane. Now I can't afford to rebuild it."

No, you were too stupid/tight-fisted to pay for buildings and contents insurance.

I absolutely cannot stand it.

on any show.

I’m trying to watch you get married at first sight love, I don’t care if your dad is dead.

it’s never relevant, unless it’s like the time a brides dad had died only a few weeks before - in which case it was only relevant because she really shouldn’t have been on the show.

a bit like Jack Osborne.

Completely agree, OP. You'd think, on the face of it, that shows about dancing, sewing, baking, being in a jungle, getting your old heirloom repaired would all be interestingly DIFFERENT from each other, but in reality they are all becoming the same show.

The name of this show is "I Am Sad and Therefore I Want ...".

As a minor detail, the various iterations of this show cover different desires of the sad people:

I am sad and so I want to win at dancing.
I am sad and so I want to win at baking.
I am sad and so I want to win at being in a jungle
I am sad and so I want to win at sewing
I am sad and so I want to win at making pots
I am sad and so I want my dad's old bicycle to be mended (and I promise to cry when I see it all shiny)

EDITED TO ADD: I am sad and so I drive ambulances and chat compassionately to poorly people.

I think there is a fine line between being able to talk about your feelings and/or things that have happened in your life, to a friend or trusted person and what seems to now be a "qualifier" to show the public you are human. Everyone needs a story now to pass the "I have emotions, me!" test. I'm surprised more ND people aren't on these shows completely refusing to be goaded into disclosure, but then they'd likely not make it in front of the camera at all.

I don’t watch much television but I would suggest the same about Facebook, whether you join a keto recipes, expat, or small houses decoration group, there is always a lot of people starting their posts with “after escaping a horrible marriage…” . FGS just tell us the recipe, what is your new location like or where you got your fucking sofa and shut up!

Yes I hate hate hate it. I saw the 303k one a pp posted about and I was like what why she didn’t deserve to win she won because he just gave it away to her. Was a bit mad about that one not going to lie.

I even hate it on the Facebook gifting groups. I’m giving this away for free I don’t want your sob story I’ll deliberately pick a person with no story. I only have 15p in my bank and I need this blanket. Nope.

You get this on The Wheel now too.

Isn’t that one of the reasons GBBO moved to Channel 4 - the producers wanted more sob stories but BBC disagreed.

YES. I couldn't agree more, OP. I no longer watch this type of show because I got tired of all the weeping, wailing, gasping and hand-fanning that accompanied every development in the game.

I'm not interested in the drama of randoms.

Back in the 80s, in fairness, game shows still had boring parts with a 'funny story' being obligatory when contestants were introduced: "Gill, you're a secretary, and you have a funny story about your boss; Dave, tell us about the time you painted the bathroom" type of anecdote, but at least that was over quickly and didn't dominate the whole programme.

I posted earlier about the Wheel, but funnily enough I did try to enter this for a charity I started, we are really shirt if money. They wanted a sob story plus a video if me doing something whacky and weird. Which is definitely not me! I didn't bother in the end.